Christian Comedians

I’ve been asked to do a five minute stand up routine in a few weeks at a private event called,Celebrate Life. I know what I’m going to do for my five minutes but I’m still kind of nervous that I’ll blank in front of 80 people or so and instead start talking about the best episodes of The Simpsons and Seinfeld. (Which by the way is the Monorail, Homer says while pointing at a family of possums living where a fire extinguisher should be, “I call the big one bitey,” and “The Hamptons” for Seinfeld. Don’t tell me it was Elaine dancing.)

The challenge with this particular routine is that it’s going to be performed in the middle of a lake on a houseboat. And I always see comedians tell jokes about the locations they are performing at, e.g. “you know what’s crazy about New York?” And I don’t know any good houseboat jokes. Plus, what if I tell one and someone from the crowd yells out, “A houseboat murdered my uncle, you jerk.” Or what if the houseboat sinks and like the orchestra playing music on the sinking Titanic, I am asked to tell jokes while everyone else gets off safely? It’s pretty easy to see that this gig is fraught with danger.

The greatest danger perhaps is that I might become a Christian Comedian. But I don’t really even know what that means. Do I have to tell Bible jokes like “Who has a short haircut, no eyes and two thumbs? This guy, if my name was Samson,” or the always delightful “A priest, a Levite and a Samaritan are walking down the road past a guy that was beat up …” Or maybe you just have to be like a Christian version of Seinfeld, “What’s the deal with communion? Is it bread? Is it a wafer? Is it possible to make it any drier in my throat? And why am I always so tempted to see how many of those little glasses I can stack on each other before they fall off? What is the deal with that?”

Maybe it’s not that bad. I know they have DVDs out and stuff like “Thou Shalt Laugh” and “Bananas Good Clean Christian Comedy” and “Yuks for Yahweh” but I have never seen any of those. (I made up one of those titles up.) Maybe, what the Christian community should do instead is elect an official comedian.

I nominate Brian Regan. I’ve seen him perform live four times, he doesn’t swear much and rarely do I need a plastic tarp to protect myself from some sort of melon he’s smashed with a giant mallet. Is he a Christian? I don’t know. Does he go to church? I don’t know. But when Ford becomes the “official vehicle of the Super Bowl” you don’t expect to see an F-150 truck lining up next to the running back on the field. I’m not saying we give him a scepter or anything but maybe just a sash that says “Official Comedian to the Christian Subculture.”

I heard Mike Warnke made up all the drug addiction testimony references (another post reference, souping up the testimony) just to get the recording contract. Am I wrong on that? Cuz my dad has already burned the cassette tapes.

I nominate the christian comedy duo Dave and Brian. myspace.com/daveandbrian. They are more for the youth/young adult/college crowd. They don’t really have any “Christian” material, but they do perform clean material, and they are Christians.

Jon, This past year I found myself sucked into the Christian comedian..genre (or whatever it's supposed to be called). Anyway, it started by catching an episode of Bananas with Thor Ramsey, it was midnight on saturday night and I was laughing so hard I cried and felt the need to tell my best friend about it immediately. For the rest of the year a friend and I watched Bananas every saturday night and although there were indeed some comedians that made us go "seriously?!" there were some funny ones.

I used to think that the comedy was going to be somehow less funny but I was glad to be proven wrong. Try checking out some of Thor Ramsey's material, he's probably my most favorite of what I've seen.

i don't know why i am flaunting my SCL n00b-ness with this super late comment, but i have to say my dad was a christian comedian back in the day (as in, made jokes about christianity) and i didn't know how rare that was until…well now. he and my mom had a one-two punch ministry(not actually called that, but that would have been awesome), where he would warm up the crowd with christian humor and then my mom would follow up with hard-hitting christian poetry. (i know that sounds like an oxymoron. isn't all christian poetry warm and fluffy and john 3:16-y, like "footprints?" false.)

now that both my parents have decidedly non-ministry, bill-paying jobs, i can look back and say there were only two problems with having a christian comedian for a dad:

a) he would (and sometimes still will) practice his material on me, which meant i got to hear both the hilarious bits and the awkward under-construction bits, making any of his real performances somewhat anti-climactic for me and all of our encounters potential training grounds for his newest piece.

b) i was always secretly terrified that he would accidentally blaspheme the Holy Spirit and earn a one way ticket to h-e-double-hockey-sticks. or worse, God wouldn't even let him waste his time trying to redeem himself and just send down one of those lightning bolts He's so famous for. for some reason christian poetry (even the kind that hit HARD!) never made me so nervous.

p.s. this site has really been a blessing to me, esp since i'm in the process of rededicating my life…again . my new christian friends told me about it a few weeks ago and i've been hunting through the archives ever since and getting inspired/convicted. really excited for my pre-ordered book to come in 🙂

I was watching Brian Regan with my Dad this weekend and thought to myself "Stuff Christians Like: Brian Regan." My youth pastor would preach in Brian Regan voice. Brian Regan is clean, you can use his stand up for sermons and he has that same self-effacing shtick that pastors have sometimes. I think Brian Regan could be a whole article on here.
P.S. Monorail is the best Simpsons episode. EVER.

I completely agree with you about the best episodes of Seinfeld and The Simpsons. You made me laugh so hard. I'm going to watch those this week for sure. I own the entire Seinfeld series so this will give me an excuse to break it out.